Summer Camp 2009 - Sunday Night
Tom Shrader opens by reflecting on student testimonies from the week, connecting their stories to the camp's theme of a transformed heart, informed mind, and radical life. He walks through 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, unpacking each quality of agape love as the defining mark of a radical Christian life, contrasting it with pride, jealousy, and self-seeking. He closes by leading students in communion, calling them to live outwardly for others rather than for themselves as the truest evidence that they belong to Christ.
“If love is the greatest virtue, then the ultimate vice is pride — it was through pride that Lucifer became the devil, and it was through pride that Adam and Eve ate.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Summer Camp
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 43 min
Themes: love, pride, grace, communion, humility, sin, transformation, serving others, teenager, student at camp, struggling with pride, new believer, feeling self-sufficient, young adult, church kid doubting their faith, searching for identity
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:14, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, John 3:16, John 13:35, Isaiah 6, Philippians 2
Theological Themes: agape love, sanctification, total depravity, becoming holy, lordship of christ, repentance, spiritual transformation, means of grace
Full Transcript
Thanks, Garrett. It's interesting that in all four testimonies — whether it was Steven, Whitney, Lucy, or Garrett — you heard essentially different circumstances, but essentially the same story. If we go back to what we started with at the beginning of the week, we're talking about a transformed heart and an informed mind on a radical life. That's what you heard in every case.
The Depth of Our Need for Grace
You will never experience that grace until you understand that deep need. Both of my girls — and I think about it all the time — were raised as the first kids at East Valley Bible Church when we started the whole deal. They were really great kids, and their whole lives we had essentially no problems with them. It always concerned me that their lives were so good that maybe they'd never understand the depth of their sin. And then all of a sudden, you hear something like what Garrett talked about.
We tend to think of sins and put them in these big categories. We go along thinking, "I'm not doing any drugs, I'm not having sex, I'm not on the internet," and we go down this list and say, "I'm not doing those, therefore I'm not a sinner." That's not true. All of us are separated from God by our sin.
Sometimes the fact that we're not doing certain things becomes a source of pride — which C.S. Lewis says is the ultimate vice, the worst sin. It was through pride that Lucifer became the devil. It was through pride that Adam and Eve ate. So I don't care where you are on the spectrum. Whether you're a church kid who's been around this stuff forever and never done any of it, but you are riddled with pride — or you're a kid who's on the internet, sexually active, and taking drugs — it doesn't matter. You all need grace. Not one of you is any less needy of a Savior than the other.
God Keeps Working on Our Hearts
God has to break your heart. That's what I was trying to say this morning. I went back and Susan texted me and asked how it went, and I said, "I don't know." I was trying to explain that the stuff of life just keeps coming at you, and I am absolutely convinced that God is just going to keep working on you and working on you.
I made this comment the other day: why does He give us our daily bread? Because if He gave me my weekly bread, He wouldn't see me again for seven days. If He gave me my monthly bread, He wouldn't see me for a month. If He let your life just sail along and everything went smooth, you would never sense this deep need for Him. So what happens is that we understand we need a transformed life — we need it because of what sin has done.
What Sin Does to Us
Remember, we looked at this the first night. There are essentially five things sin does when it comes into our life — and first, it separates us from God, which sets up all the rest. Once I'm separated from God, I can't understand Him. Garrett used an interesting phrase about God becoming just one of those. In Japan, many houses have what they call a God shelf, with all their little gods on it. When you come along with Jesus, they'll take a crucifix and just add it to the shelf. That's what sin does — it separates us from God, and then it leaves us so confused that we can't understand Him.
This brings us to a pivotal verse you need to know: 1 Corinthians 2:14. The natural man cannot understand spiritual things. So instead of seeking Him, I start looking to all these other gods. They inevitably disappoint me — whether it's the god of drugs or the god of religion, whether I'm proud of how much Bible I know, it doesn't matter. All false gods, whether it's the moral religious god or the hedonistic selfish god, never fail to fail you. And ultimately you have no fear of the one true God.
The Transformed Heart and the Radical Life
But when your heart is transformed, your life changes. That's what we looked at again yesterday — John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son." It is so simple and yet so powerful. Christ died because He loves you. There was no way for you to be saved unless Christ died. God could not simply say "I forgive," because His justice demands that some penalty be paid for your sin — and Christ paid that.
Now we get to the radical life. Now it's the love of Christ that controls us. We're not driven anymore by lust — and by lust I don't mean merely sexual desire, I mean any consuming desire — where, like a dog, if it feels right, we just do it. We're not driven by that anymore. We have the Holy Spirit within us, that Spirit has been poured out, and now the love of Christ controls us.
That doesn't mean the battle is over. The victory is won, to be sure. We know it — you sang about it. There will be that day: no suffering, no pain, no hardship. I yearn for that day. But until then, we fight battle after battle after battle. God will never leave us and He will never forsake us. And get this — this changes my life, and I trust it will change yours: if you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, there is not one thing you can do to make Him love you any more, and not one thing you can do to make Him love you any less. He loves you perfectly.
Living a Radical Life
It is because He loves you that He will discipline you. It is because He loves you that He won't let you do just anything you want to do. It is because He loves you that He says, here are these parameters, here are these boundaries, here is how you are going to get the most out of life. That is what our whole life of studying God's Word is about.
Now we live this radical life. If I said to you that you are going to live a radical life, what comes to your mind? Your heart has been transformed, your mind is being informed, that transformation has taken place. You were separated from God, now united with Him. All of those effects of sin are gone.
When I say a radical life to you, what do you begin to think about? The first night we looked at Isaiah, and we will look at it again tomorrow night. Isaiah sees God, then Isaiah sees himself, and then God moves in verse six and forgives him, and then God says this: Isaiah hears a voice saying, "Who shall I send?" And Isaiah says, "Here I am, send me." His heart has been transformed and his mind is being informed because he has seen God and who He is, and because he understands that he is a sinful man who was separated from God but is now united with Him.
Now we understand that God is at work in the world. What is it? What needs to be done? I was with the four-year-olds the other night, checking on some of the rooms at six o'clock, right at a moment when the teacher said, "Somebody needs to pray." If you can picture those little four-year-olds, they were all jumping up and down saying, "Let me pray, let me pray, let me pray." That is Isaiah saying, "Send me, send me, send me."
A Radical Life Is Not a Single Prescription
When I say radical life, I am not thinking of a specific action in your life. When Garrett says he started at the church when he was two, and when I look back at students who have been in our summer camps and through our school, we are talking about people whose lives are extraordinary. There are students from our summer camp who are now doctors, lawyers, electrical workers, plumbers, laborers, moms, and dads. There are some of you who are going to be used in such a way that even the world is going to look and say there is something there.
All of you who know Christ will be used in a significant way, exactly according to how He has gifted you. He made you in a certain way. He gave you a certain personality, a certain set of gifts and skills, and some are more valued by the world than others — but that does not even matter. His concern is that you will take the life He has given you, whatever it is, including the struggle, the hurt, and the pain, and that you will become a young man or young woman who says, "Here I am, send me."
What I do not want to do is give you a prescription of what a radical life looks like. I have had probably a dozen of you ask, "How do I get to know God?" A couple of you stopped me tonight while we were waiting to come in and asked the same thing. The answers are the ones you know: pray, study God's Word, be here on Wednesday night, be engaged with other students, be involved with a discipleship leader, spend time in community talking about all of this. But there is something deeper I want to go to.
The Body of Christ in First Corinthians
Open your Bibles, if you would, to the book of First Corinthians. If you remember where Romans was, it is the next book to the right. When you get to First Corinthians, go to chapter 13. It is an interesting book. Paul is writing to a church that is all messed up — they have problems at every level. They have a man in the church who is having sex with his mother. They have homosexuality, slander, gossip, and pride. They have every kind of issue you can imagine.
Paul has been telling them some remarkable truths, and he has been talking about how God put together this thing called the body. What the body means is this: no one of us has all of the gifts that God intends. God has made it so that I am dependent upon you and you are dependent upon me. Even in a simple structure like the one we have at our church — and I am not putting other structures down — but in many church structures you have a senior pastor, one person who plays the dominant leadership role. We have done away with that. There are actually four of us who lead the church together, with no one having more power than another: Neil, Tyler, Tim, and myself. We are four very different men, and when we come to an issue we are much stronger together than when it was just me.
That is what Paul is saying: we need the body of Christ. Why should you be engaged in the church? Why is it important for you to be there on Wednesday night, even if your sense is that you are coming and not getting anything out of it? Maybe the problem is this: you do not come to get something out of it, you come to put something into it. Maybe you have reached a point where God has done such a great work in your life that it is no longer about you changing in that way — it is about you pouring your life out.
The Radical Life Is Driven by Love
The radical life, I'm convinced, is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 through 7. The radical life is a life that is driven by love. The night before He died, Jesus had His apostles gathered together, and here is what He said to them: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you love one another." And then He says this — make a note of it — John 13:35: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
When you sit and think about that, Jesus had all sorts of options. He could have said they will know you are My disciples if you really study the Bible well and know it inside out. He could have said if you are people who really pray, or people who are really sold out to worship. He could have said all sorts of things. But He didn't. He didn't single out any one activity, because He is not that concerned in and of itself about what we do. He is far more concerned about why we do it.
Matt mentioned it this morning, and it moves me every time — when I see you all worship. When I get into certain spots during worship, I like to stand in the middle and move around, and I always end up over here. I look out and there are certain songs where you are singing, and you see a thousand hands in the air. You see the silhouette of the band, the blue in the background, and you hear those voices — your voices. It is amazing. It never fails to move my heart.
But here is the thing: you can be standing there singing, and if your heart is not right, that is just idol worship. Does God love to look down and see you praise Him? The answer is yes — if your heart is right. That is the biggest thing, isn't it? That is the biggest challenge. It is not just to do the things, but to do the right thing for the right reason.
I think at the absolute core of it, what God wants us to be is people who love. When He looks at those apostles, He says to them, "This is how all of the world is going to know." Not just the church — this is how the students at Mesquite, Gilbert, Basha, Rhodes, or wherever you are — this is how they are going to know that there is something different and unique about you. You are going to love.
What Kind of Love?
Now, in the Greek there are all sorts of words that could be used when talking about love. There is brotherly love — *philadelphia* — a general friendship love. There is *eros*, a sexual love. He could have used that word. He doesn't. He uses the word *agape*. It is a totally different word, one that is almost unique to the Christian faith.
There is no place in the whole Bible that defines what the radical life is better than these verses. Tonight you are going to come face to face with the greatest love you have ever experienced. It is the love that Garrett talked about, the love that Whitney talked about, the love that Lucy talked about, the love that Stephen talked about, the love you have been singing about. It is the love that Jesus Christ came and died an excruciating death to demonstrate.
That death was physical, to be sure, but consider also the agony of sin. We do not always think about the fact that God hates — but God is a God who hates. He hates sin. Jesus despises sin. He was a sinless, perfect man, not drawn to sin the way you and I are. As we talked about this morning, He is not carried away and enticed; there is nothing internally in Him drawn to sin. He hates sin. And yet at that moment on that cross, for people like you, He endured the very thing He hated.
Remember His prayer the night before He died. What did He pray? "Father, if there is any other way, if there is a plan B, let's do it. Is there any other way?" Is there any other way that those students at Summer Camp 09 at Point Loma University can experience love and forgiveness? If there is, let's do it. And God said there isn't. And Jesus said, "Not my will, but Your will be done." That is what He did — for you. He went there for you.
Living It Out
And now He says, "I want you to live that way." Paul tells us that we are to have the mind in us that was also in Christ Jesus, and then he talks about humility, and then he talks about Christ's death on the cross. That is what the radical life looks like.
Tomorrow night when I wrap it up, we will talk about the different ways it should look. I say it every year: when you get off that bus — even if it breaks down on the way home — when your parents pick you up, they should see a different kid. Not a fake kid. A genuinely changed kid. Think about everything Garrett said, and think about how he identified his sister as the greatest junior hire ever. That is love.
So let's go through it. Paul tells us some things here about love — what it is and what it isn't.
Love Is Patient
Love is patient. Here is what that means: it means long-suffering. It speaks of relationship — not with circumstances. He is not talking about patience like sitting at a red light or waiting in line. This is patience with people. Love, primarily, begins here — it is patient with people.
Love understands that people will take advantage of us, that people will inconvenience us. The other night I had my iPhone charging by my bed, and I had forgotten to put it on silent. At 1:21 in the morning it started dinging. Like a little dog, I ran to see what it was. It was a text message from a friend talking about a problem in their life, ending with, "I don't know what to do." You know what you do when you get a text at 1:21 in the morning that says that — you text right back and say, "You up? Call me." Why? Because it is inconvenient, and love is patient. Nobody in the whole world loves their bed more than me, but love is patient.
Love Is Kind and Not Jealous
Love is also kind. It means it serves, it is generous. It does not mean thinking about doing something nice — it means actually doing it. It is not just good thoughts or good intentions; it is carrying them out. Love is patient and love is kind.
Here is what love is not: it is not jealous. There are two sides to jealousy. One is wanting what someone else has, and the other is simply not wanting them to have it — which may even be worse. Love is happy for the other person, even when they have far more than you. Maybe that person has all the talent, all the smarts, all the energy. Love says, "I want what is best for you, and I am not jealous of whatever you receive." If God gave you that family, if God gave you those gifts, love rejoices with you rather than resenting you for it.
Love Does Not Brag and Is Not Arrogant
Love does not brag. It is the only time this particular word appears in the New Testament, and it means to talk conceitedly, to boast. You know the person — always blowing their own horn, always telling you how great they are. No matter what you share, they trumpet right over you with something that makes themselves look better.
I was talking to a man recently whose son is a Marine — deployed to Iraq four times and Afghanistan once. His son called and said, "Dad, can you come to Camp Pendleton? They're going to recognize me tomorrow." He got up there and they gave his son a Bronze Star. That is what they give you when you are a hero. This young man had taken out a suicide bomber and discovered an entire area rigged with explosives, along with a whole range of other heroic acts. Yet here is how his son presented it — not "Dad, come watch, I am really special," but more like they were giving him perfect attendance in junior high. That is love: it does not brag.
Love is also not arrogant. If love is the greatest virtue, then I am convinced the ultimate vice is pride. That is the thing that pulls you down. Take someone who is really smart. The only reason they are smart is that God made them that way — they had nothing to do with it. For them to be prideful about that is a sin and an offense to God. The same is true for athletic gifting, musical ability, or any other talent. Some of you are incredible athletes, unbelievably gifted. You have no reason to be proud of that. You did not produce it — God gave it.
Gifts Are Given, Not Earned
Tim and I were having a conversation at lunch today, and I said, "What would you do if you lost your job? I can't do anything — there is honestly not one thing I can do." Tim started listing things I could do, and for everything he listed I said, "I can't do that." I am going to walk into an interview and someone is going to ask what I do, and I am going to say, "I talk." And they will say, "We have plenty of that." Can I pound a nail? Not really. Can I fix a car? It drives Tim nuts — he will say I can do it, and I tell him I cannot and do not want to. That is just not what God made me to do, and that is the point. Every gift is given. None of us earned what we have been given, and pride over something God simply placed in us is misplaced entirely.
Gifts Are Not for Comparing
We take some gifts and make them way bigger and better than others, but they aren't. Maybe your gift is the one that nobody notices. I said to one of the crew dads — we were sitting right back here the other night — I want to thank you. You were amazing. This guy is at church working all the time, volunteering all the time, working constantly. These crew dads kill themselves over here. I said thank you so much, and he just started to tear up. Then I got a long email from him today, and he said he just loves to do it. You know what that is? It's a gift. God has given you something.
Maybe you're tall — I didn't get that one. What did you do to be tall? You can't possibly be proud of the fact that you're tall. You didn't do anything to be tall. Or maybe you're pretty. In our economy, in our life, if you're pretty — girls especially, although some of you guys are prettier than some of these girls, to be honest — you didn't do anything. You were just born that way.
Here is how this all comes together. The minute we start using words like "gift" or "prettier," we start to compare. And the minute we start to compare, we get jealous and boastful and prideful. Love is not that.
Love Does Not Act Unbecomingly
The scripture says love does not act unbecomingly. You know what that means? It means rude. Careless. That is why one of our fundamental principles is that we always leave a place cleaner than we found it. That is what you ought to be.
I walked with one of the students today, just walking along, and his head was down. I said, get your head up — you look up when you walk, don't look down. He said, yes sir, and that made me feel good. You guys have been incredible the whole camp. Getting in here, dealing in the cafeteria — all of those things matter. It matters that you take your plate back and put it on those trays. It matters that the table is clean. It matters that the room is in order.
It matters, boys, that you treat the girls with respect. It matters that you open a door. It matters the way you treat each other. It all matters. We do not act unbecomingly.
Love Does Not Seek Its Own
At its very core, right there in verse five, love does not seek its own. It is not concerned about me. Those of you who have been with us have been studying 1 Samuel, and there is this man named Jonathan. Here is what Jonathan says to David: "You tell me what to do and I'll do it." Can you imagine that? Jonathan also had a man whose name we never learn — we only know what he did. He was an armor bearer. He carried around Jonathan's armor and swords, and when Jonathan said, "We're going to do this," the armor bearer said, "Just tell me what we're going to do, and we'll do it."
Love does not seek its own because Jesus loved. He died on the cross. It is the ultimate picture of love — "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."
Love Does Not Keep Score
Let me go through the rest of this quickly. Love is not provoked — that means it does not get angry. It does not keep score. Lucy had an interesting illustration this morning. She said she got so mad at her dad, and then she started to blame her dad for everything that came into her life — it was all her dad's fault.
I want to acknowledge that some of you have gotten hurt in life. Some of you have people who take advantage of you. You are not the only one that has ever happened to, and for some it has been even worse. But love does not keep score. Love does not build an account. Love does not say, "That's ten times she's done that, that's twelve times he's done that — I'm going to get back at them. They owe me." Love never does that. Love does not keep score, and love does not assign blame.
Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but it rejoices in truth. It does not rejoice in sin. It rejoices in the Word of God — in what this Word says — because God says it and it is true, even when it does not perfectly make sense to me, or even when it calls me to do things I do not necessarily want to do.
Bears All Things, Believes All Things
Then there is verse seven. Since I taught this passage a year and a half ago, this verse has had more impact on my life than almost any other verse I have dealt with in a long time. Do you see it? "Love bears all things and believes all things and hopes all things and endures all things."
I think of that in the context of relationship. What is so important for you in your life right now is who you hang with, who you spend time with. There are certain people, certain situations, and certain settings that when you are in them, they are just going to pull you down. Paul says bad company corrupts good morals. You need friends. You need people who love.
Bearing All Things
"Bear all things" means to cover, to support, to protect — to not allow another person to be exposed or ridiculed. Think about how many opportunities you have in the course of a single school year to bear all things: to stand up for someone who has become a point of ridicule, someone everyone is gossiping about or slandering. If you love them, you stand up for them. That is what it means to bear all things.
To believe all things means love is not cynical or suspicious. It believes the best. It gives a person the benefit of the doubt. To hope all things means that even when belief runs out, there is still hope — that as long as grace is alive, failure is never fatal.
God is not looking for a bunch of winners, because none of us are that. We are all people desperately in need of a Savior, and failure is never final. You are going to blow it. No matter who you are — the best student here, the most godly, someone with a transformed heart and informed mind living a radical life — you are going to sin. There will be moments when you walk away, times when something overwhelms you and sweeps you away. But love says that is not the final chapter. It is just a step along the way.
Love bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things. And when all those are gone, love endures. Endurance is a military term. It means to take a vital position and hold it at all costs — to press through regardless of hardship or suffering.
A Transformed Heart and an Informed Mind
When it comes to a transformed heart and an informed mind, the foundation is straightforward: sin separated us, and God is the solution. An informed mind means going to the Word. When someone asks how they can know God, the answer is simple — study His Word. How do you get to know a person? You spend time with them, you read about them, you interact with them. With God, you spend time with Him, you pray to Him, He speaks to you through His Word, you listen to Him, and you surround yourself with godly people. I continually have a handful of people in my life whom I ask: What do you think? What do you think God would have us do?
The Radical Life
When it comes to the radical life, it will look different for each person. Some of you will be professionals, some stay-at-home moms, some executives, some will work with your hands. Some will make a lot of money, some hardly any. Some are academically gifted; for others, books and school are not your thing. None of that is the point. A radical life is the life of a God-lover who becomes a people-lover — someone who does not seek their own.
The radical life says, "It's about you, not about me." It is a life consumed with the vertical relationship with God, so that when it turns to horizontal relationships with people, self is the last concern. I said to a friend recently: as long as being around me and talking with me is of value to you and advances you, I want you to do that. The minute that interaction with me is no longer advancing you as a person, you do not need to spend much time with me. This relationship is all about you, not about me. That is what it means to be a lover. That is the radical life.
The most radical life ever lived was Jesus. He did not merely say He loved — He demonstrated it. God did not simply say, "I love you." He said, "I loved you so much I gave." Jesus told His disciples again and again, and He was able to say to them: just as I have loved you, now you go and love. Jesus says to you and me that here is how the world will know we are radical — not only that we sing and raise our hands, not only that we pray, not only that we study God's Word, though all of those things matter. What separates us, what makes us truly radical, is that our lives are not about ourselves but about other people. Get that into your heart, and you will be a radical person.
Communion
You cannot live that way apart from knowing Christ. God gives us a prescription, and here is what He tells us: when you gather together, remember that Jesus died for you. That is communion. At East Valley Bible Church, it is what we do essentially every time we gather. It can be a meaningless ritual — you go through the motions and it amounts to nothing. Or it can be something truly significant.
We are at that point right now. Father, thank You for this night. Thank You for the fact that You indeed transform our hearts and inform our minds so that we can live radical lives. God, will You do that work in our lives.
SC09 Sunday Night
A Prayer for This Moment
I pray now for the students. I pray for those who are waiting for this moment — this is the moment their heart is bursting. And for others, at this moment, this is a time of genuine battle, really struggling. God, will You work in their hearts. Let Your Spirit really rain down on us. Let us enjoy and love the fruits that we have from knowing You. We pray that to You tonight in Christ's name.